- AIKON CEO Marc Blinder says in an interview that projects like Ripple (XRP), Tesla and AIKON are more sustainable than Bitcoin.
- Bitcoin’s energy consumption level (BTC) has a negative impact on the ecosystem.
In a recent interview with Ripple’s CTO, David Schwartz, AIKON CEO Marc Blinder discusses ecosystem sustainability. Blinder makes a distinction between projects that are sustainable and their opposites. In the former, Blinder puts Ripple (XRP), AIKON and Tesla. Bitcoin enters the second category due to BTC’s high energy consumption related to mining.
AIKON’s CEO argues that projects with low sustainability are an obstacle to mass adoption for cryptocurrencies. In that sense, Blinder said that Ripple (XRP) and Tesla exemplify how a sustainable project works. Tesla, according to Blinder, has managed to build a product with a good user experience that is still environmentally friendly while maintaining high quality.
Is Bitcoin the most environmentally harmful cryptocurrency?
Blinder further outlines that Tesla’s products have a very low carbon footprint, just like the digital asset XRP. In contrast, Blinder was forthright when he said that the energy level consumed by Bitcoin mining is destroying the environment. This is due to its consensus algorithm, Proof of Work (PoW), which requires more and more energy, according to Blinder, to keep the blockchain working.
Bitcoin mining produces about 22 megatons in coal emissions, according to research cited by AIKON’s CEO. Blinder added that the figure will continue to increase as Bitcoin’s annual energy consumption currently stands at about 45.8 TWh, according to the research cited in the interview.
In contrast, the carbon footprint of the digital asset XRP is 10 million times smaller than Bitcoin’s. According to a study by the University of Waterloo’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, XRP is the most environmentally friendly digital asset. For this reason, the research concludes that the asset will have greater adoption in businesses.
As for Bitcoin, the aforementioned research states that Bitcoin is on the opposite trend. The energy footprint generated by Bitcoin, the research says, is equivalent to that of a country the size of Austria. However, it should be noted that many times these investigations do not take into account the type of energy or equipment used to mine Bitcoin. BTC’s mining activities, after all, only account for 0.35% of total global energy consumption.
Blinder emphasized how the sustainability of a project plays a key role in mass adoption. He also said that in addition to energy efficiency, the user experience will be important in increasing adoption levels:
The problems with mass adoption are actually on the front-end user experience level. A quality experience for the average person will make the biggest impact. We need very efficient systems if we want to use blockchain for [a range of]different use cases in the future.
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